432 THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS. 



provements in vision as those which make possible a better 

 estimation of distances by adjustment of the optic axes, and 

 those which, through enlargement and subdivision of the 

 retina, make possible the discrimination of shapes, must 

 have the effects of giving greater definiteness to the classes 

 already formed, and of sub-dividing these into smaller 

 classes, consisting of objects less unlike. And we should 

 find that each additional refinement of the perceptive or- 

 gans, must similarly lead to a multiplication of divisions 

 and a sharpening of the limits of each, division. In every in- 

 fant might be traced the analogous transformation of a con- 

 fused aggregate of impressions of surrounding objects, not 

 recognized as differing in their distances, sizes, and shapes, 

 into separate classes of objects unlike each other in these and 

 various other respects. And in the one case as in the other, 

 it might be shown that the change from this first indefinite, 

 incoherent and comparatively homogeneous conscious- 

 ness, to a definite, coherent, and heterogeneous one, is due to 

 differences in the actions of incident forces on the or- 

 ganism. These brief indications of what might be 

 shown, did space permit, must here suffice. Probably they 

 will give adequate clue to an argument by which each reader 

 may satisfy himself that the course of mental evolution 

 offers no exception to the general law. In further aid of 

 such an argument, I will here add an illustration that is 

 comprehensible apart from the process of mental evolution 

 as a whole. 



It has been remarked (I am told by Coleridge, though I 

 have been unable to find the passage) that with the advance 

 of language, words which were originally alike in their 

 meanings acquire unlike meanings — a change which he 

 expresses by the formidable word " desynonymization." 

 Among indigenous words this loss of equivalence cannot 

 be clearly shown ; because in them the divergencies of mean- 

 ing began before the dawn of literature. But among words 

 that have been coined, or adopted from other languages, 



